


Smile, And Smile, And Be A Villain

by Saucery



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Analysis, Canon - Movie, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Character Study, Deception, Drama, Essays, F/M, Gen, M/M, Manipulation, Meta, Movie Spoilers, Mutant Rights, Mutants, Psychoanalysis, Redemption, Spoilers, Villains, Villains to Heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 21:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1703642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oh, Erik. You utter <i>Slytherin</i>.</p><p>WARNING: SPOILERS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smile, And Smile, And Be A Villain

* * *

 

Oh, Erik. You utter  _Slytherin_.

Erik planned it. He planned it all. He played the villain at the end of DOFP in the  _exact same way_  Batman played the villain at the end of TDK. Erik knew Raven would be there, and had faith in her (and in Charles also being there to give her pause), so he knew she’d save the day. She’d stop him. Because she didn’t want a war with humanity at large—she’d said so herself, earlier in the movie—and he could count on that. He could count on her strength. Her inner virtue.

Meanwhile, a public that already feared and hated him as the supposed killer of President Kennedy would find it all too plausible that he really  _did_  mean to kill another president. The role of villain was so perfect for him, and so familiar to him, that he played it to the hilt. After carefully directing all available cameras to record and broadcast every moment of his grand performance. _  
_

He knew that in order for humans to be taught both lessons—that mutants were more powerful than humans, and that mutants would, if treated well, side _with_  humans—things had to be done in exactly this way. He had to be the villain, and Raven had to be the savior.

He made it so that the world changed for real, that it never became the horrifying dystopia that Logan had come from. Erik had seen that doing things the way he’d always done them yielded bad results (Logan’s tales of the future, especially), and Erik decided to change his game. Not visibly, of course. And not entirely. But enough to stage the greatest rescue in American history—the rescue of the president and his cabinet by a mutant.

Here’s why I think Erik planned it all.

Erik had spent many, many years in captivity, haunted by what he’d done to Charles, and how disastrous his own actions had been, failing to save many of his fellow mutants. So when he met Charles again and Charles demanded that Erik do it  _his_  way, that no one die, that’s exactly what Erik did.

Note that when Erik controlled the Sentinels and made them fire at civilians,  _none of them were hit_. Thousands of bullets were flying through the air, and yet not a single civilian—or politician, for that matter, or even that bastard Trask—was shown being felled by any one of those bullets. What’re the odds of that? Erik was controlling every bullet, and he made sure no people were killed.

ERIK.

KILLED.

NO.

ONE.

Just like he’d promised Charles.

He was doing things Charles’s way. Sure, he knew how to bare his teeth convincingly, because he was, after all, a tiger by disposition. He knew how to be threatening without any intention of following through. He never did mean to kill the president or any of those men. He just made it look like he was going to kill them, as the dramatic finale of his stereotypical villainous soliloquy.

He also knew that if he distanced Raven from himself by being hostile to her, she’d be more willing to hurt him in the name of saving humanity. That’s why he shot her. Remember how Erik, who has flawless control over the tiniest filament of metal, only shot Raven  _in the calf_? Again, what are the odds of that? I mean, Erik could infiltrate the Sentinels with metal  _while they were on a moving train_ , in spite of the incredible delicacy of that procedure. And yet, Erik couldn’t hit a moving target like Raven, while she was falling out of the window of a room he was already in? I can’t believe that. It’s ridiculous.

And then he had the guts to joke that he thought Raven was a better shot, when Raven also shot him non-fatally at the end of the movie. It was a deliberate clue on his part, a perfect reflection, a fearful symmetry, hinting at the fact that he himself was a better shot. That he would’ve killed Raven earlier, if he’d honestly meant to kill her. Let’s not forget that Erik’s body-count is, er, very high. If he wants to kill someone, they’re dead. It’s that simple.

But Erik, after listening to Logan’s version of the future and spending years thinking on his actions in prison, was a changed man—particularly after seeing how broken Charles was, and realizing that he had played a part in that brokenness, that he’d hurt the very person he loved most. I’m not saying that Erik was  _completely_  reformed, but he was, at least, reformed  _enough_  to do things differently—to do them Charles’s way. Well. Partly Charles’s way. But with a more Slytherin approach to utilitarianism and deceit, because, despite what he said to Raven about never lying to her before, he  _did_  lie to her in this movie, allowing her to believe that he would have ended her life for his “mission,” and allowing the world at large to believe that he would have ended the life of yet another American president.

Still, that isn’t even the biggest clue to Erik’s true intentions.

The biggest clue is that Logan wakes up in a future in which humans and mutants live in harmony. The biggest clue of all is that  _Magneto obviously never stirred up trouble again_ , because if Erik was still out on an anti-human vendetta, he wouldn’t have rested until humans were suppressed under mutant rule or eradicated altogether, and even should he have failed at that, he would still have left the world fundamentally divided and fearful of mutants. _  
_

What did Erik do in those in-between years? From 1973 to the day Logan woke up in a brighter future? We don’t know. Not yet, anyway—maybe that is the stuff of a sequel. But what we do know is what he _didn’t_  do—he didn’t try to split the planet with mutants on one side and humans on the other.

That doesn’t mean Erik’s core motivation had changed in DOFP. It hadn’t. Erik was still completely devoted to the cause of mutants, but he had at last understood that the well-being of mutants lay in the well-being of mankind as a whole. Erik likely still felt no affection or respect for humans, but he would do anything for “his own kind”. Including painting himself as the villain society was happy to see him as.

Erik. Thanks again for reminding me that were I to write a Hogwarts AU about you, I would absolutely have to cast you as a Slytherin. Perhaps even the Head of Slytherin.

Well-played, my friend. Well-played. I bet you got laid spectacularly when Charles figured you out.

 

* * *

**fin.**


End file.
